The Morning Cometh: The December 2011 LSAT Aftermath

After (what were hopefully) months of studying, the December 2011 LSAT has come and gone. It’s been over 24 hours since the test came to an end, and the dust has mostly settled. So what will its place in history turn out to be? Well, it seems like it was pretty forgettable. The word of for the day yesterday was “standard.” No one came running out of the test saying that there were entirely new question types or particularly monstrous elements or anything like that. It was actually surprising just how unsurprised everyone felt. Whether people did well or poorly, relatively few people had strong feelings. What people do seem to agree on, at least partially, is the following:

Games – These seemed to have been very conventional. Early reports indicate that the first two games were very easy. Game three seems to have been straightforward but time consuming, while the fourth was possibly the hardest, but some test-takers said it was unlocked with a key deduction. A decent number of people ran out of time on the fourth game due to having their time sucked up by the third. A lesson to be learned for those of you (re)taking in February: Get through the easy games quickly to buy yourself time for the hard ones.

Reading Comp – Apparently the hardest section of the test, RC also sported a particularly nasty comparative reading section. Comparative reading has been with us for a good four years now, and it seems like it’s really becoming a versatile testing tool, with LSAC grafting many different types of passage onto the format. I had two students who said that it was more interesting than usual, but that may have just them being in the zone for game day.

Logical Reasoning – Again, seemed pretty standard, with possibly a few quirks. For one, some people are being pretty insistent saying that there was a typo in an answer choice. People have thought that before, though, and it nearly always just turns out to be difficult, but correct, wording. If it truly was a typo, it will most likely be removed from scoring. Second, the difficulty level of the questions seemed to be more spread out, with very easy questions no longer being reserved exclusively for the early sections of the test. Also, one of my students said that there were far more crux questions than normal. But on the whole, pretty standard section.

So now we wait! Congratulations to all who took it, and here’s to a Happy LSAT Score Release Date of January 6, 2012!

Were the flaws, strengthen, or weakens those that contained a comparison between absolute numbers and percentages? Have not seen those in a while and am curious if the old LSAC pulled that one out of the bag.

A baby BP student here. Looking for advice on how to take in/learn from the posts on past LSAT administrations (like this one). I just read all the comments on the instant recap and freaked out slightly because it made the test sound slightly schizophrenic, any advice on how to take the best of our other poster’s experience without developing PTSD before even taking the stupid test? :)

My best advice is to completely ignore everything you read in the instant recap. People who wrote that just finished a 4 hour test after studying for several months. They were stressed out. Some were probably actually exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia. You should not take what you read in the comments section of the Instant Recap post (or any internet comments section for that matter) too seriously.

Go back and read The Morning Cometh overviews. They’re usually a little less reactionary. People have had a chance to sleep, reflect, take their meds. You’ll get solid information from them.